rue

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Vanity Fair increasingly sells
sex; Sex selis Madonna as art

ABOUT TWO months ago,
I decided to cancel my
subscription to Vanity Fair
magazine.

Catherine

JUST AGD WATER

had taken the subscription last
Christmas because the magazine
featured some interesting, well-
researched pieces by excellent
writers.

Sure, these stories were in-
terspersed with tales of lifestyles
of the rich and famous around the
globe, but I simply ignored the
stories about bored (and usually
boring) glitterati.

What caused me to pitch the
weekly renewal notices sent by
Vanity Fair is that, in the past
year, the magazine has made in-
creasing use of sex on its covers.

Unlike some people, | really
don’t give a hoot about Demi
Moore posing mostly nude in the
advanced stages of pregnancy. |
don’t find anything offensive
about a woman showing us her
big bump.

But I could have done without
Annette Bening shoving her

‘cleavage into my face, above the
really subtle caption: Yes Yes An-
nette!

The magazine's use of sex to
sell copies culminated with the
October issue, which featured a
semi-nude Madonna on the cover
as a plug for her new coffee-table
book, Sex.

(Of course, there are more
naughty photos inside, with
Madonna looking like an escapee
from the 1950s, sort of a depraved

Sandra Dee.)

It’s not that I’m morally
outraged by Annette or Madonna,
or the semi-nude models in the
Calvin Klein ads. I just find them,
and the thinking behind them,
rather irritating.

I’m sorry, but if I'm in the
market for a pair of jeans, seeing
the tiny, perfect right boob of a
§5-year-old nymphet won't influ-
ence me to buy that brand.
What's next? Post-coital scratch
and sniff inserts?

Unlike your average corner
store porn niagazine, the use of
sex in a publication like Vanity
Fair is highty calculated; it’s sup-
posed to say to pecnie like me,
‘Hey, this ‘s one hip, fun and un-
inhibited magazine.”

tall falls under the term of
marketing savvy and can be ap-
ptied to both the advertising and
editorial sides. It’s this type of
calculated naughtiness that landed
former Vanity Fair editor Tina
Brown the top editorial job at the
New Yorker (and people are still
shaking in their boots over what
changes she might make to that
revered publication).

Pm not afraid of change or
people challenging the status quo.

But I find the comment in
Vanity Fair from Fabien Baron,
art director of Harper’s Bazaar
and designer of Sex, so pat and
simplistic it’s laughable: ‘America
is too Puritan. Sometimes you
have to slap people in the face te.
have them change.”

Yeah, right, Fabien. !’m sure
half the female population of
Gary, Indiana, now wants to
make it with two tattooed les-
bians, inspired by Madonna’s ex-
ample,

[I'm not irritated for feminist
reasons by Madonna and others
who want to push sex into the
mainstream.

Nobody is forcing women to go
topless to sel! jeans, or jump into
bed with a co-star in an afternoon
soap opera,

Fm not going to waste my time
demonstrating or lobbying to save
a Calvin Klein model from a life
of boob-baring oppression.

But let’s not allow people to
convince us that sex in the
mainstream is liberating or arty.

It’s simply out to make money
off us.

As the Vanity Fair story on

Auten sv

Madonna points out, there is a
group of people around the star,
fanatically devoted to her, who
make an awful lot of money from
Madonna’s ability to keep
reinventing herself as a pop phe-
nomenon.

The effort that went into pro-
ducing Sex is a testament to what
people will do for what scems like
guaranteed megabucks.

The launch of Sex was the big-
gest international release of a
book ever; on Oct. 21, 750,000
copies went on sale simultaneously

MAILBOX

Canadians need more choice

Dear Editor:

The vote was No, and although
resounding in B.C., not so in
most of the rest of Canada.

The country has not collapsed
and it will not overnight. :

What does it mean? Only that
Canadians in general did not like
the package as a whole.

What have we missed? A very
expensive chance to know what
parts of that package we did like.

I resented the fact that when
standing at the cardboard divider,

I had to put my ‘*X’’ beside Yes
or beside No.

I would have liked a question
that allowed me to say No, But!
or even Yes, But!

For the first time in history (my
50 years at least), everyone from
five years to 104 years was talking
about Canada. We all liked some
things and we all disliked other
things.

Yes or No should not have been
the only choice.

We needed a check mark beside

Travelwise, check your numbers

Dear Editor:

Mathematically speaking, Bar-
bara McCreadie may have set a
new record for travel journalism
goofs.

Cathedral Provincial Park
would have to be about 372 times

larger than it actually is if it were
to be, as Barbara claims, ‘‘three
times larger in area than
Switzerland.*’

G.C. Hamilton
North Vancouver

all the relevant features so that
our politicians would have had a
true referendum for the parts, as
well as the whole.

I did not reject A(i), the
Canada Clause. ! did not reject
A(2), AG), B(1), B(2), B(3), ete.,
etc.

I voied No because it was the
only choice if 1 did not buy a
package. :

I was not buying a car with a
cigarette lighter when J do not
smoke. I was being asked to buy a
country and no one was giving me
a chance to order an extra option
or leave the whitewalls behind.

Nex time, politicians, let us

‘vote on more than one question.

‘You will find that we have more
intelligence than you thought.
You will get guidance. We will
get a country.
David Ingram
North Vancouver

around the world.

So readers from Japan to Great
Britain could see Madonna in alt
her sado-masochistic splendor,
stagecring production obstacles
had to be overcome,

Callaway had to mass-produce
the 750,000 copies of a com-
plicated, handmade-looking art
book printed in five colors and
five languages with several kinds
of paper.

The normal quantity for books
with similar production qualities is
about 250. All this effort so we

6, 1992 — North Shore News - 7

won't forget Madonna.

“TL love when people really hate
Madonna — Madonna does, 100.
She'd rather that than apathy,”
says her publicist Liz Rosenberg.

Try to find the subtlety, the
complexity, the poetry of sex in
all this. The kind of sex you find
in Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

Today we’re swamped with sex
as an industry. A product of
Calvin Klein, Warner Books,
MTV, etc.

What a drag.

Code eliminates wording

Dear Editor:

Re: New NDP labor bill

In your Friday, Oct. 30 edi-
tion, MLA David Schreck is
quoted as saying, ‘‘Teachers
have never been designated as
an essential service.’”

This is being said in response
to the North Shore Liberals
Dan Jarvis and David Mitchell
opposing the bili because it
removes education fromthe
essential service category of the
labor code.

The fact is that the current
Industrial Relations Act, the
one the NDP wants to elimi-
nate, under the heading
“Essential Services,’’ the Act
in Sections 137.8 to £37.99
provides how interest arbitra-
tion is handled.

Subsection (1) of 137.8 states
in part, ‘‘Where the minister ...

* considers that the dispute poses

a threat ... to the provision of
educational services in the pro-
vince, the minister may...
direct the (Industrial Relations)
Council to designate those ...
services ... essential ...”’

This is what is being elimi-
nated from the proposed new
labor code.

Labor disputes affecting
education simply cannot be
allowed. ,

I urge the government to
listen to Jarvis and Mitchell
and put back in the Labor bill
the opportunity for education
to be declared an “essential
service.’’

Even if it is never used, the
fact of its existence perhaps
will bring a degree of tolerance
and compromise to the educa-
tion bargaining table.

Terry Lester
West Vancouver